AMERICORPS, AMERICORPS – Volunteers from Americorps clean a plot at 725 Main St. in Hyannis to prepare it for a workday on Nov. 9. The site is landscaped with plants that remove toxins from the soil.

Volunteers welcome to help on Monday

Duke Ellington once told a musician who was complaining about a problem, “Fix it.”

In other words, take responsibility.

A lot of people in Hyannis have done just that, and the result is a park at 725 Main St., which used to be a gas station. On Monday (Nov. 9), they’re going to do more work at the park and they would like more volunteers.

A landscaper who lives in Yarmouth and a landscape architect who now lives in Boston have offered their share of services. So have a Hyannis bagel business and a Hyannis pizza parlor.

“I liked the idea of taking a terrible-looking landscape and making it beautiful,” said Craig Whitten, who with his wife Nicole maintains “725” – it has no other name – pro bono for the town. The Whittens also maintain Sherman Square and Pleasant Street Park in Hyannis, because, Whitten said, “I dislike seeing projects that I do let go. I take a lot of pride in my work. I don’t like to drive by a private home and see that it’s not maintained.”

Whitten’s business and home are in Yarmouth. But he does a lot of work in Hyannis, he said, and got interested in the idea that plants “can actually do a job.”

Kate Kennen is a landscape architect whose graduate school internship led her to study the uses of plants as filters for pollutants. She discovered that many grasses and flowers absorb toxins and bloom where they are planted. The plants’ work is called “phytoremediation.”

Kennen worked for the Town and now has her own business, Kennen Landscape Architecture, in Boston. She praises Barnstable for creating a network of departments that improved communications among themselves.

She said that the site was relatively “clean” considering that it had once housed petroleum products, but that plants could filter the soil even more because their roots thrive on some of the products that a gas station leaves behind.

Alisha Parker Stanley, property management coordinator for the town’s Growth Management Department, said that more than landscape know-how has been involved at “725”.

In May, the project won an award from the Boston Society of Landscape Architects for “Success With Limited Resources.”

Craig Whitten said of the park at 725 that “more people should go there,” to see “how pretty it is.”

Parker Stanley offered a variety of jobs to do this coming Monday from 8:30 a.m. until about 4:30 in the afternoon. Volunteers can weed, plant new bulbs, and mulch. They can also divide perennials that will be planted on other town properties.

According to information provided by the town, the former gas station was bought in 2001 from Land Bank funds. Among other volunteers, Boy Scout Troop 52 of Cotuit and Marstons Mills helped to cut flowers for the Barnstable Senior Center. Niall Kirkwood, chair of the Harvard Graduate School of Design landscape architecture department and three of his students, Patrick Curran, Addie Pierce-McMannon, and Jennifer Toy, worked on the garden as well.

Volunteers for Monday’s clean-up are welcome at any time beginning at 8:30 a.m. More information is available from Stanley at 508-852-4749 or at her e-mail address,
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Parker Stanley praised the “extremely wonderful” volunteers who have worked “through rain, muck, and mud” and trash to make “725” a lovely space, and welcomes more people to donate their time on Monday.

“I live in Hyannis,” she said, “and I drive by it every day. It’s a way we’ve bettered our community, and it’s beautiful.”